


beyond the now

by SinginInTheRaine



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), F/M, Fix-It, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Infinity Stone Soul World (Marvel), Not Canon Compliant, POV Steve Rogers, Pining, Rescue, Steve Rogers Feels, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-08-14 09:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20189668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinginInTheRaine/pseuds/SinginInTheRaine
Summary: “This place needs an exorcist.” Wanda’s announcement came as they were all clearing their dishes from dinner. "I was almost killed by a ballet shoe this morning.”Steve’s head shot up. Something stirred inside him, but he pushed the thought down.Natasha was gone. She wasn't coming back. The ballet shoes, the Russian music, the photo that didn't want to stay in its place — all of it were just coincidences.Weren't they?





	beyond the now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [outruntheavalanche](https://archiveofourown.org/users/outruntheavalanche/gifts).

Steve thought he would feel better once he’d returned all the stones. He had done it slowly. Carefully. Taking his time.

He had stayed in 2012 for a couple days after, spending most of his time hunkered down in a local bar just outside the disaster area, wearing jeans and an old ratty t-shirt he found in a trash can and a baseball cap pulled low on his head. He sat on a barstool, drinking beers that would never affect him, and watching his friends from another time on TV. He watched the world learn about the Avengers and he watched the critiques and the compliments, and he marveled at how young the rest of them seemed back then.

He stayed in the seventies for a little bit, too, mostly to study Peggy from afar. He saw her husband and her children, and he whispered goodbye to her from across a street and finally let go of the image he’d always had of them dancing together in an empty room.

He returned the soul stone last, standing atop the cliffs of Vormir and looking down at the place where Natasha had died. His chest felt like it was on fire, it ached so much. The lump in his throat made it hard to breathe.

He remembered her standing there, seconds before they all went their separate ways. _“See you in a minute!”_ He thought about not going back to his own time and instead going back to a few minutes before they all headed out. But for what? To stop her, and let the world be destroyed? Or just to tell her what he should have told her and never did — that she was the most important person in the world to him for so long, that he was sorry he hadn’t been there more the last few years, that he couldn’t — and still can’t — imagine a world without her in it, that he didn’t know how he was going to survive without her, that if he could have a dance with one person it would be her, that he loved her. 

If only he had told her that he loved her ...

But instead he left Vormir and went back home, back to his own timeline and the friends waiting for him there — Sam and Bucky, Bruce and Clint and Wanda — and he smiled at them and told them everything went fine.

The Avengers Compound had been destroyed, but there was another compound a few short miles down the road that Stark Industries also owned. Pepper told them Tony would have wanted them to have it, and so those who didn’t have anywhere else to go moved in. Steve, Bucky, Sam, Rhodey and Wanda got their pick of rooms, but there were other rooms for those who dropped in more infrequently — Scott and Hope, Pepper, Carol, Thor, any of the Guardians, T’Challa, Shuri, Peter Parker — and there were even rooms that weren’t quite ready yet but would someday be for the new generation — maybe Morgan or Cassie or Lila Barton.

Steve went back to the apartment he had been staying at in Brooklyn to get his stuff, most of which he had never even bothered to unpack. At the bottom of one box, he pulled out a photo he hadn’t seen in years. It had been taken long ago, back when they had been living in Avengers Tower, and Steve couldn’t remember now who had taken the photo — Tony or Bruce maybe. 

Natasha was behind him in the photo, her arms wrapped around his neck, her head pressed up next to his. He was reaching up, his hands over hers, and they were both grinning. They looked so happy.

Steve stared at the photo for a long time, trying to remember ever feeling as happy as they looked, and then he sat it down on his bedside table in his new room in the new Avengers compound.

“I miss you, Nat,” he told the photo. “I’ll always miss you. I’ll always love you.”

He turned around to head out of his room, but a loud crash sounded behind him. He turned back and frowned. The picture of him and Nat was now lying on the floor.

“Strange,” he murmured, picking it up and putting it back in place, and then heading out of his room for real.

•••

“This place needs an exorcist.” Wanda’s announcement came as they were all clearing their dishes from dinner.

“What?” Rhodey said.

“There are strange things happening around here,” Wanda said. “Don’t tell me I’m the only one who’s noticed. I’m pretty sure this place is haunted.”

“There are no such thing as ghosts,” Rhodey told her.

Wanda stared him. “Seriously?” she said. “We just had a war over Infinity Stones. We fought side by side with a _raccoon_ and a _tree_. Our new friend can fly through space and shoot lasers from her eyes that can destroy an entire spaceship. And Steve just had an adventure through time. But _ghosts_ aren’t real?”

“Ummmm,” Rhodey said.

“Explain to me then why I was almost killed by a ballet shoe this morning?”

“A ballet shoe?” Steve’s head shot up at that. Something stirred inside him, but he pushed the thought down.

“Yes!” Wanda said. “I was walking down the hall, and I tripped over something and almost fell down the stairs, and when I looked back, a ballet shoe was lying there. And I’m pretty sure none of us do ballet!” She stared around at everyone as if daring them to confess.

“Don’t look at me,” Sam said.

“That’s not proof of ghosts,” Rhodey said.

“I have heard music at night when no one’s around,” Bucky suddenly piped up.

“I did get out of the shower once and there was a heart drawn through the condensation,” Sam said, then added, “You know, like Natasha used to do.”

“See?” Wanda said to Rhodey.

“I still don’t believe in ghosts,” was all he said.

•••

Steve couldn’t stop thinking about Wanda’s ghost theory. He knew, rationally, that it couldn’t possibly be true, but he couldn’t get his brain to stop thinking about it. The picture falling after he talked to Nat through it. The ballet slipper on the floor when the night before he had been remembering the time Natasha had dragged him to the ballet and regretting that he had never seen her dance. The hearts in the shower that Nat used to draw. The music Bucky heard, just like the music Natasha used to play when she was alone in Avengers Compound.

But no … he was being ridiculous. Seeing things that weren’t there. Making connections that weren’t true all because he missed her so much, because he wanted her back so badly. 

But Rhodey was right. Ghosts didn’t exist.

“Right, Nat?” Steve spoke into the silence of his bedroom. “You’re not here, right? You’re not a ghost?”

He stopped talking and looked around. Nothing happened. The room was completely quiet.

“I thought so.” He got up off the bed and walked to the door. A light thump sounded behind him.

He turned — and almost passed out.

Lying in the dead center of his bed, facing upward, was the photo of him and Natasha that had seconds before been sitting on his bedside table. 

“You’re a ghost,” Steve whispered.

•••

“She’s not a ghost,” Wanda said.

“No, no, no, you don’t understand,” Steve started, for what felt like the hundredth time, but Wanda shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think she’s a ghost. I think she’s trapped.”

Steve didn’t expect that. He stared at her. “What?”

“I heard one of the Guardians talking about a rumor they had heard,” Wanda told him. “They were saying they’d heard that when someone dies by an Infinity Stone they aren’t dead but trapped in a different realm.”

Steve stared at her, and then, “And you didn’t think to tell anyone this?”

Wanda frowned. “Why would I tell anyone that?” she said. “It was a rumor that did not seem particularly true at the moment.”

“But now …”

“But now ballet slippers are trying to kill me and pictures are flying around your room and Natasha seems to be the common denominator in all of this.”

Steve thought. It seemed crazy to dare to hope. “You think she’s trying to tell us something?”

Wanda reached out and touched his hand. “Let’s find out.”

•••

It wasn’t an easy task — finding a way into a realm that no one knew existed and with no idea how to do it. Wanda called Shuri in Wakanda, and she was there the next day. Steve sent a message to Carol, and a few days later, she too showed up. They figured if they had any chance it was going to be with the smartest woman they knew and the two women whose powers both came from Infinity Stones.

The three of them holed themselves up in a makeshift lab they had put together for Shuri, and Steve spent his days pacing the hallways of the new compound, with Sam and Bucky trying to keep him sane.

“If there’s a way, they’ll find it,” Bucky said.

“What if there’s not a way?” worried Steve.

“You think Natasha’s trying to talk to you,” Sam said. “If that’s possible, this is possible.”

Steve supposed that was true. The maybe not-so-mysterious happenings had been increasing since Shuri and Carol had arrived. Almost every day, Steve’s photo of him and Natasha was in a new place. More people had heard Russian music playing when there was nothing around them that could play music. One of Natasha’s widow bites had appeared one morning on the breakfast table, and everyone swore it hadn’t been them, especially since most of them had thought everything she’d once owned had been destroyed when the old compound was.

But yet Steve was afraid to hope. He missed her so much, it was like someone had torn a hole in his heart. And the idea that he could have her back, that he could touch her and hold her and tell her how he felt, even if she didn’t feel the same, was so overwhelming that he constantly felt like he was waiting for Shuri, Wanda and Carol to appear and tell him there was no hope.

•••

“I think we got it.”

Steve almost dropped the plate of food in his hand as he stared at Shuri. She was grinning at him from the doorway to the kitchen, Wanda and Carol behind her looking just as excited.

“You got it?” Steve repeated.

Shuri nodded. “We think so,” she said. “We’re going to try as soon as someone feeds us lunch.”

Steve pointed to the sandwich toppings he had spread across the counter. “All yours,” he said. “Can I be there when you try?”

Wanda answered. “Of course,” she said. “Natasha would want you there.”

An hour later, Shuri, Wanda, Carol, Steve, Sam, Bucky and Rhodey were gathered in Shuri’s lab. Steve had never felt so nervous in his life. His palms were sweaty, he was nauseas and he could barely stand upright. The others kept glancing over at him, and he lost track of the comforting shoulder thumps he got from Sam and Bucky.

Carol was the one who had been selected to try and make it into the other realm. She was by far the most powerful of all of them, and her powers were the most connected.

She held the Pym particles in her hand and took a deep breath.

“See you in a minute,” she said.

_“See you in a minute!” Natasha had grinned_

And then Carol was gone. And all Steve could do was stare at the spot where she had vanished, his heart pumping wildly in his chest, his whole body shaking.

If this didn’t work, if it didn’t work, if it didn’t work …

And then there was a noise. And then a flash. And Steve blinked, and then …

“Oh my god!” He was running forward. Carol was standing there, much as she had a minute earlier, but there was something in her arms.

_Someone_ in her arms.

For a minute, he thought she was dead. She was limp in Carol’s arms, her head drooped back, her eyes close. Her face, the only part of her not covered by the time travel suit she was still wearing, was almost sheer white.

But then Steve reached out a hand, almost unconsciously, and touched her cheek, and the most beautiful green eyes in the world fluttered open and the smallest of smiles appeared on her lips and a voice that sounded like it had not been used in months croaked, “Hey soldier,” and then he was taking her from Carol, pulling her into his arms, crying, laughing, kissing her face and her hair and she was clinging to him and it was by far the best moment of his life.

•••

The compound, and the world around them, was silent. Steve held Natasha tightly against him as she lay with her head on his chest, her feet tangled with his. They were up on the roof, lying on an old couch Steve had made Bucky and Sam take up there and set up. Natasha had wanted to be outside, to make sure this was real, and even though it was freezing, they had a pile of blankets and they had Steve, who Natasha had always referred to as her own personal heater.

It had been less than twelve hours since she had returned. She hadn’t said much, and Steve could tell she was exhausted, but she seemed okay otherwise. A little withdrawn, a little unsure, but all that was to be expected. She had been gone for months, trapped in a dimension with no way out.

Steve tightened his grip around her, as if to remind himself she was really here.

“I missed you so much,” he murmured into her hair. He felt her fingers tighten their hold on his shirt. “I thought I was never going to see you again.”

He wanted to ask her what she remembered, if she remembered anything. He wanted to ask her if that had really been her trying to contact them. He wanted to ask her so many things, tell her so many things in return. 

But not now. Now she needed to rest and feel safe and feel loved. There would be time for everything else later.

He smoothed his fingers through her hair, rubbing his hand over her back. He felt her begin to relax under his touch.

“I love you, Natasha,” he whispered into the night air, once he thought she was asleep.

“I love you too, Steve Rogers,” she mumbled sleepily, and he stared down at her in surprise. She tilted her head up and smiled at him, and then she kissed him. 

She did fall asleep after that, but Steve stayed awake, long into the night, holding her against him and dreaming of the future and reminding himself that finally, finally, she was back and they were together and everything he wanted was lying in his arms on a rooftop fast asleep.


End file.
